My wife and I have just bought a new house which includes a space that is perfect for a large panoramic print. Suddenly I find myself reading all the old threads about big prints and trying to figure out how I would 'do a Gursky'.
What I know: the wall space is 6 m x 2 m, but after leaving room for lighting and white space a print around 3 m x 1 m in size is about right. I can live with the grain from a 4x5 negative enlarged that big: you will need a step ladder to get close to the print, and it's likely to be fairly abstract anyway, so fine detail is less of an issue.
What I want: I'd really like to get a painter to paint a fresco, but that's not going to happen any time soon. But, the print should be as flush with the wall as possible, and ideally should have a matt surface. I'm not too fussed about 100-year archivability, but I don't want to have to replace the print because of colour shifts in, say, the next ten years.
My options (as I see it): inkjet onto canvas, mounted onto a stretcher with/without a frame; or one of the face-mounting methods like Diasec or silicone onto acrylic. I'm leaning towards face-mounting, perhaps with an extra aluminium or acrylic backing, but feel I don't know enough about it yet.
Questions:
1) Anything I've missed? Other ways of framing/mounting such a large panorama without creating a noticably thick box on the wall?
2) Can large face-mounted prints be shipped without damage and without incurring ludicrously high shipping costs? Inkjet onto canvas has the advantage that it can be shipped as a roll and put on a stretcher in-situ.
3) How matt are the matt/pearl acrylic sheets used for Diasec/silicone mounting? I don't mind a bit of texture, but I don't want to lose clarity.
4) How do people physically attach a large face-mounted print to the wall?
Grateful for any ideas and advice.
Struan
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